Edico Genome, a San Diego, CA-based developer of genomic solutions, raised $10m in Series A financing.
The round was led by Qualcomm Incorporated, through its venture investment group, Qualcomm Ventures, with participation from Axon Ventures and Greg Lucier. In conjunction with the financing, Mr. Lucier joined Edico Genome’s board of directors.
The company intends to use the funds to commercialize its DRAGEN™ Bio-IT Processor.
Founded in 2013 by Pieter van Rooyen, Ph.D., chief executive officer, Robert McMillen, Ph.D., vice president of engineering, and Michael Reuhle, director of system architecture, Edico Genome provides DRAGEN Bio-IT Processor, a sequencing bioinformatics application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) which reduces the computational time required for analyzing a whole human genome from 24 hours down to 18 minutes.
The DRAGEN Bio-IT Processor is embedded on a PCIe form factor card and is provided with accompanying software as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) platform that can be integrated into sequencing machines and next-generation sequencing bioinformatics servers. The processor is loaded with highly optimized algorithms for mapping, alignment, sorting and variant calling. One card can be used to analyze the data generated by a full HiSeq X Ten system producing 18,000 whole human genomes per year.
The company is now completing validation studies with alpha customers that include clinical labs and sequencing centers and plans to submit this data for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
Interested parties may apply for early access to the technology here.
FinSMEs
17/07/2014